Event Details

How do you build your

Event Details

How do you build your identity when your past has been stripped away? With no access to their heritage, four women are forging a new sense of self. In the country that was once the epicenter of the Jewish world, and now regarded as “the Jewish graveyard,” they are figuring out how to be Jewish in today’s Poland.

The Return brings this new world to light, seen from the very different perspectives of Kasia, Tusia, Maria and Katka – the third generation of Holocaust survivors – as they struggle with difficult choices. Some of these decisions are no different than those faced by young women their age everywhere. But, for these four, woven into every decision is the larger question of personal and communal identity: What does it mean to be Jewish in a country with the richest of histories yet almost no living presence? Can a sustainable secular Jewish identity be constructed—without religious observance? What does it mean to try and embrace not just a religion but an ethnicity, a race, a culture? Ultimately, is Judaism in Poland truly viable?

Director

Adam Zucker – an award-winning documentary filmmaker and editor. His previous film Greensboro: Closer to the Truth premiered at SXSW, was the closing night film at the Full Frame Film Festival and went on to play at over 35 festivals in the U.S. and abroad. It received the Audience Award for Best Feature at the Rome International Film Festival and Best Documentary at the Dead Center Film Festival. The film has also been shown at dozens of universities and educational settings, including the United Nations.

Adam Zucker was director, writer and co-producer of episodes of the three-part series Free to Dance, chronicling African-American contributions to modern dance. The Emmy-winning series aired on PBS. Previously Zucker made 16mm experimental films which have shown nationally, including a one-person screening at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has received grants from the Sundance Documentary Fund, Jerome Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, Foundation for Jewish Culture, Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture and the Southern Humanities Media Fund among many others.